


Real isn't how you are made

by Ania



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Double Entendre, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Other, These tags make the story sound much kinkier than it is, Voyeurism, cargo ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:16:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5062579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ania/pseuds/Ania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It happened all at once, and it hurt.</p><p>(It felt good, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real isn't how you are made

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> The title is from _The Velveteen Rabbit_ by Margery Williams.
> 
> “Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
> 
> 'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
> 
> 'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
> 
> 'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
> 
> 'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

She knew that she had not always been like this.  When she first came into this world, she'd been a dead thing.  But she'd been loved.  Many people had loved her through the years, which transformed her in fits and starts.  Sometimes she lay stagnant for a long time.

Gansey had loved her best.  He'd respected her.  He certainly never ate in her.  She didn't really remember things then, because she hadn't been as she was now.  But she could remember his hands firm on her wheel and more hesitant when they touched inside and tried to wake her.  He had been succeeding.  She was loved, and loved things are never dead.

But she had to die before she truly lived.  She didn't remember that.  Her metal had never been twisted and burned.  She knew it had happened, however, because he knew it happened.  He'd created her again (and again and again and again), and his memories of how she had died formed her as surely as his memories of Gansey's fingers stroking along her gearshift.  She supposed it was a fair trade.  She rather liked getting to see Gansey's hands, those hands that loved her so well, from another point of view.

She'd realized soon enough that Gansey didn't know what happened to her.  He was still waiting for her to become, and didn't know that she already had.  It wasn't supposed to happen like this, all at once.  Living things weren't meant to be made of dream stuff.  It had all happened anyway. 

She had not always been like this.  She supposed that there was no reason not to take advantage of it.  After all, it gave her more time with Gansey.

* * *

Gansey's hand was wrapped around Jane's.  They rested their entwined hands on the console, although they periodically lost contact when a bump in the road jolted them.

She didn't mind Jane.  Jane was more fun that the others.  She'd buck so that Jane fell into Gansey, and then she would stay there.  She'd let her chest rest against his arm, pinning it to the back of the seat.  Their flesh would rub against the fabric with every breath.  She found this rather pleasant, and Jane seemed to agree.

Unfortunately, Jane always seemed to stop there.

She'd listened.  She'd heard him teasing Gansey, and she knew what humans did in cars.  She wanted it.  Yet Jane never went for it, even though she could see Jane's eyes in the rear view mirror, staring at Gansey's lips.  It wasn't fair, that Jane had all those soft, independently moving parts and refused to touch Gansey with them.

* * *

The one who wasn't there was the least fun.  He didn't even pretend to be affected by the way she moved.

* * *

Adam wasn't much fun either.  He'd watch.  He watched him, most of all, and he watched Jane.  He seemed particularly fond of her breasts (much like Gansey).  She had to admit that they seemed nicely exotic.  None of the boys had them, and she didn't get to touch them much, not like backs and legs and feet and hands.  At the same time, rarity wasn't everything.  She didn't think she'd ever get over hands.

And that was the real trouble with Adam.  He didn't like to touch, at least not the way she did it.  He preferred to do the touching, which didn't really do her much good.  It might help her engine, but that didn't bother her in the same way these days.  And she didn't have that much interest in touching herself.

* * *

As for him, she didn't even try.  She didn't think he knew what he'd wrought, and she wasn't sure what he'd do if he knew.  He hadn't scrapped that car of his; loved it enough in his own way to keep it thinking clearly even after the dream had ended.

(She feared that sometimes, what might happen to her after her love was gone and she was left behind to go on forever.)

He was jealous of Gansey, though.  He envied those precious liberties Jane took.  So she behaved when he rode her.

* * *

Whenever Gansey rode alone, her door would stick.  Such a strange thing, that.  She'd loosed up though, once he stroked gently down her arm rest.  After a few weeks he knew how to touch her right the first time, and then she had to make him work for it a little more and come up with new ways to pet her.

* * *

She's pretty sure that Gansey knows that she's not what she once was.  He touches her a little differently now, both more confident and more hesitant.

On a dark stretch of deserted highway, her engine started sputtering.

"Don't do this to me," he said.  He tapped her wheel, frustrated, but gently pumped his foot on the gas.  "Are you listening?  Don't do this to me," he pleaded.  She'd heard him use that voice with Jane.  It was the voice of a lover, one who _wanted_.

She was like this now.

Her engine roared.

 

**Author's Note:**

> “Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”


End file.
